Sudanese, displaced from the town of Sinjah, receive humanitarian aid at their makeshift camp in the eastern city of Gedaref on August 22, 2024.EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP/Getty Images
Weeks of peace negotiations have failed to end the fighting in two of Africa’s most destructive wars, leaving little prospect of any imminent halt to the violence that has triggered humanitarian disasters in Sudan and Congo.
Diplomats and international mediators have been struggling to make progress in their separate peace processes for the two escalating conflicts this month. But battles have continued in recent days in Sudan and in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dimming hopes for a breakthrough in either country.
The United States had convened diplomats at a ski resort near Geneva on Aug. 14 to seek a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access in Sudan. After 10 days, the talks ended on Friday without any progress toward a ceasefire, although there was an agreement on opening two new humanitarian supply routes.
Sudan’s military, which has been battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than 16 months, refused to attend the talks in Switzerland and showed little interest in future negotiations.
“We will not go to Geneva,” army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told reporters in Sudan on the weekend. “We will fight for 100 years. … We will not co-exist with the rebels and we will not forgive them.”
The mediators, including officials from Middle Eastern countries and international organizations, said they regretted the Sudanese army’s refusal to attend. “That limited our ability to make more substantial progress toward key issues, particularly a national cessation of hostilities,” they said in a joint statement at the end of the talks.
This handout image posted on the Sudanese Armed Forces's facebook page on August 24, 2024, shows army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan giving a press conference in Port Sudan.-/AFP/Getty Images
In eastern Congo, meanwhile, clashes have continued between Congo’s military and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel militia, despite a ceasefire that was intended to take effect on Aug. 4.
For months, the Angolan government has led an intermittent series of peace talks between Rwandan and Congolese officials in its capital, Luanda. But agreements between the two sides have been routinely violated by the forces on the ground.
Over the past three days, Congolese news media have reported intense fighting between the M23 militia and government-allied forces in several villages in North Kivu province, a war-ravaged region of eastern Congo.
The wars in Sudan and Congo have caused widespread suffering and misery in both countries, with massive numbers of refugees and internally displaced people trying to survive in poor conditions.
In Sudan, the war has already killed as many as 150,000 people, U.S. diplomats have estimated.
About 10.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes, making it the world’s biggest displacement crisis in total numbers. Of these, about two million have crossed borders to seek shelter as refugees in neighbouring countries. Nearly 26 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – are facing acute hunger, while famine has begun in some areas, according to United Nations agencies.
The talks in Switzerland led to an agreement to reopen humanitarian access to the Adré border crossing between Chad and the Darfur region of western Sudan. But after the first convoy of aid trucks entered Sudan, the flow of supplies was temporarily shut down by government officials for two days, before being reopened again, in a reminder of the fragility of the agreement.
“Heavy restrictions from both warring parties have drastically limited capacities, including ours, to deliver aid,” humanitarian agency Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) said in a statement to mark the 500th day of the Sudan war on Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the war, MSF has treated nearly 35,000 acutely malnourished children in Sudan, but a growing number of children are dying of hunger, the agency said.
“The help they most urgently need is barely coming and, when it does, it is often blocked,” said Tuna Turkmen, the MSF emergency co-ordinator in Darfur.
“In July, for instance, trucks with MSF supplies in two different locations in Darfur were blocked from reaching their destination. Two trucks were held by RSF, and one was seized by unknown armed men.”
Nearly 80 per cent of hospitals and clinics have been forced to close because of the war, MSF said. As recently as Aug. 22, shelling hit a house where MSF staff were living in North Darfur, the agency said. It was the 84th attack on MSF staff, vehicles and buildings since the war began.
The fighting has led to a collapse in Sudan’s health system and much of its infrastructure. On Sunday, during torrential rains in eastern Sudan, five villages were destroyed and dozens of people died in surging waters from a burst dam. A new outbreak of cholera has killed at least 28 people across the country in the past month, including in refugee camps where overcrowding has heightened the risk of illness.
In eastern Congo, after two years of war, the fast-growing camps for displaced people are equally overcrowded, causing illnesses and deaths. More than two million people have been forced from their homes as a result of the M23 conflict.
The military clashes and the deteriorating conditions in the temporary camps have worsened the spread of mpox, the virus formerly known as monkeypox. Hundreds of Congolese have already died from mpox, but the full extent of the outbreak is unknown because of a lack of testing in the crowded camps. In the areas controlled by M23, many suspected cases of mpox are never tested or treated, because medical teams cannot reach the areas.
Red Cross officials create awareness around mpox in the Don Bosco refugee camp in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo on Aug. 22, 2024.Moses Sawasawa/The Associated Press